Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

A while ago, I wrote about saving. I'm curious if you thought about it. Did you do anything?

I'm not a stock picker -- in fact, my past experience is pretty lousy. I took a different approach this time. First of all, I decided to diversify (yeah, that's obvious, I know) and I decided to lean toward the Warren Buffett approach to holding. He's quoted as saying, "Our favorite holding period is forever."

So back in May I started investing $25 per week in stocks using Sharebuilder. The nice thing about Sharebuilder is that you can buy stocks for $4 or less based on the investment program you choose. There are no account minimums (I started with $25) and you can buy fractional shares of stocks. My first stocks were Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG).

Back in May, a share of Apple cost $103. I bought 0.0482 shares. I also bought 0.0107 shares of Google at $466 and 0.0655 shares of Chipotle at $76. Today Apple is at $186, Google is currently $695 and Chipotle is $133. Overall I've had a 25% gain on my investment in just under six months.

Realistically I don't expect to see those kinds of gains, but I'm excited that I'm finally doing something and it's such a small amount ($25 per week) that we haven't even noticed it in our budget. I'm planning on holding for the very long term and look forward to increasing my investment amount over time. I'll pick different stocks as it makes sense, but I'm not day trading or moving in and out of stocks quickly. Slow and steady with a little bit going in every month.

Thoughts?